This bonus episode is a round-up of unrelated stories from the hosts. As with all bonus episodes, this is both unedited and off topic. If this is your first time here, we suggest checking out a regular episode first!

Before digging into the episode, we mention two art-related things. First, there’s an art contest for drawing Baron von Badass. If you want to enter, you can find the relevant information here: http://feartheboot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1004. Second, I mention that I’m looking for artists for character portrait commissions. It’s something I’m doing over the longterm due to cost, but if you’re interested in doing it, you can post something on the forums or just send me an email.

With that out of the way, we wrap up our list of bad player habits. Obviously this is part 2 of 2, with the list started in the previous episode.

We kick off the episode with a story about our trip to a hibachi restaurant. When it’s time to discuss roleplaying games, we begin with a look at what sort of person wants to be a GM. We then work through a list of common GMing mistakes and how to avoid them.

We recorded this episode live in the gaming area of the Archon sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming convention. If this is your first time listening, this episode is not recorded or presented in the way we normally do a show. You may want to check out a normal recording (like episode 21) first.

We devoted this episode to talking about the con and offering some advice on how to run or play in a successful roleplaying game while at a convention.

If you want to hear more of the coverage we did at Archon or see any of the pictures we took, check out the feed at http://archonstl.libsyn.com. We’re still working on that page, so many audio files and pictures are not yet present. Please keep checking back, as we intend to have the whole thing done by the end of the week.

We’d like to remind everyone FTB will be at Archon this Thursday – Sunday, so if you’re going to be near the St. Louis area, please stop by and say, “hi!” In addition to our panels and guest interviews, our FTB ladies will be running a HAFU event to protest the Zombie Squad’s treatment of the undead.

Episode 21 starts off with the winner of our “Regular Joe” character contest. We’d like to congratulate wmcduff for his entry, and we’ll be contacting him with his GeekLabel prize code shortly.

The advice topics for this show are the use of foreshadowing and dreams in your roleplaying game, as well as how to handle party in-fighting.

You should quickly realize this episode isn’t quite right. This is part of a promotion that’s being done between a dozen gaming podcasts. One week in September, each show will be run by the hosts of a different show. The strangers you’re hearing on Fear the Boot are Mick and Rae from Misfit Brew. In this show, Mick and Rae talk about RPGs, focusing on Rae’s impressions of the hobby as a non-gamer.

If you want to hear your “home team” FTB hosts, you can find us over at the Roundtable. For a direct link to the show we did for them, click right here.

A big thanks to Mick for hosting this show and letting us host one of his! And let me wrap this up by giving you the relevant links for Mick and Rae…

Before every show, we go through a dysfunctional routine which we describe at the start of this episode. We also talk about the market penetration of podcasts in the gaming community and one of the few fixtures of gaming life we haven’t yet discussed: junk food!

Our main topic is evil characters and evil parties, though we didn’t realize just how big the subject was until we started talking about it. This is one we might revisit in more detail at some point in the future.

At the end of the show, we announce our next contest. This one is the exact opposite of our “freak show” contest. To enter, head to our forums and look for the “contests” topic area. In 500 words or less, give us a deep and interesting character whose race/class is as boring as possible. We want to demonstrate that interesting characters have nothing to do with concept, so blow us away with your secretaries, garbage collectors, farmers, and the like! The prize is a $30 gift code for GeekLabel.com.

Just as I promised on the forums, here’s a bonus episode to go hand-in-hand with episode 18!

We intended to make this bonus episode about our take on where Battletech went wrong. However, we ended up on so many tangents that the show is really more about where creative endeavors in general go wrong.

As you probably know by now, these bonus episodes are neither edited nor quality controlled. So if this is your first time here, please check out a regular episode to find out what our show is really like.

In this show we cover some fond memories of FASA product catalogs, name the winner of our “freak show” character contest, offer our thoughts on card games, kick around some settings we wish had their own roleplaying games, and offer our thoughts on the use of electronic devices to aid your games.